From: Pip Chodorov (email suppressed)
Date: Wed Jun 20 2007 - 23:24:00 PDT
Dear FrameWorkers,
Starting this Sunday, June 24th, and through
mid-September, my latest 16mm film will be
permanently looping at PS1 contemporary art
center in Queens, New York. See ps1.org for
practical information.
FrameWorkers in New York are invited to the
opening this Sunday from noon to 6pm.
Information about the film follows.
Film:
Pip Chodorov. "Faux mouvements" ("Wrong moves"), 16mm, 2007, 12 min.
Superimposed bipacked contact prints of color and
high-contrast black and white material onto color
negative stock, hand printed and hand processed
at L'Abominable, Paris do-it-yourself film lab.
Produced with a grant from the French national film center (CNC).
Assistants: Nicolas Rey, Marie-Odile Sambourg.
Produced by Les Productions Aléatoires.
Cinema is about the illusion of movement. The
film strip is made up of individual pictures in
succession. The phi phenomenon explains how the
brain creates bridges from frame to frame,
filling in the gaps, creating the illusion of
smooth movement during the black intervals
between frames.
The perception of movement is processed in areas
17 and 18 of the visual cortex. Neurons in V1 and
V2 are responsible for identifying obects in
motion, their speed and direction, and global
motion across the visual field. This information
is processed and passed down to V5/MT where all
stimuli are integrated, specific neurons
determining specific perceptions, such as upward
motion or forward motion. These perceptions can
be tricked - cells adapt to motion stumuli and in
the absence of that stimuli, produce the opposite
perception. Staring into the center of the
turning spiral causes forward motion detectors to
adapt to that stimulus; the still picture of the
train then appears to swell out.
This film follows research started in
"Charlemagne 2: Piltzer" (16mm, 2002, 22') which
concentrated on the perception of color and the
creation of phantom colors not present on the
film strip through flickering.
In "Faux Mouvements", forward and backward
motions occur together, movement in different
directions are combined. We perceive motion in
images that are in fact still. We can also see
references to the spiral of the film reel, and
the negative and positive of the film process.
Some stills are available at re-voir.com/pip
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.